Australian linguistic question

[kindkit]

I am pondering upon the verb "to root." I know it means "to fuck," but I'm wondering if it's used in a fairly neutral denotative way (not jokey, not hostile) simply to refer to people having sex. The sentence context would be something like, "He didn't know if the two of them were actually [having sex]."

"Rooting" sounds odd to me in that context, but that could easily just be because it's not a word I use myself.

Comments

[damned_colonial]

So, "root" is mildly offensive and correlated with class, as in it's more working class slang than middle or upper class. It's roughly analogous with "screw" in US English in terms of level of offensiveness.

Typical usage would be something like: "I reckon she'd be good for a root" or "how about a root, love?" or "I wouldn't root that if you paid me". Imagine all these said in a very broad accent after a few beers, and you're on the right track. FWIW, I don't think I've heard "root" from any of my (mostly middle class) friends since adulthood, unless they were joking around and being intentionally crass.

I presume you're writing this for DAAS, who of course *are* being intentionally crass, so "root" would be fine, but you're right that it doesn't sound quite right there. If I were writing DAAS and wanted to write that sentence, I'd finish it with "bumping uglies".

[kindkit]

Thanks so much! That's exceedingly helpful.

It is DAAS, of course, but it's totally outside of a performance context and not meant to be funny. Plus it's Richard's POV. So it sounds like "root" is not the droid word I'm looking for.